


Detours

by Blackbird Song (Blackbird_Song)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 20:51:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackbird_Song/pseuds/Blackbird%20Song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Ianto experience more than one unwelcome detour during a difficult time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Detours

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://community.livejournal.com/horizonssing/profile)[**horizonssing**](http://community.livejournal.com/horizonssing/) [Day Fifteen challenge](http://community.livejournal.com/horizonssing/5156.html#cutid1). Many thanks to my husband for the beta.
> 
> Further notes at the end of the story, so as to avoid spoiling things.

Jack had fielded the call at noon. It had come from UNIT's main number, but the caller had been a rather flighty man from [Cadw](http://www.cadw.wales.gov.uk/%22), and Jack had cursed inwardly that Ianto (who would have handled the man much better) was in Tredegar without his car. Jack hadn't enjoyed the tedious, traffic-laden hour it had taken to get there (it was supposed to take fifty-two minutes, according to the map, and that meant that it should have taken him no more than forty-five, if he were being unusually considerate). He had relished even less the task of pulling Ianto away from the first Sunday lunch he'd had with his sister since Canary Wharf.

Less than three miles up the B4560, Jack cursed and swerved onto the detour directing them towards Crickhowell. "How long before we get to Talgarth?"

"If you can keep this up, probably about twenty minutes," said Ianto, without referring to the sat nav.

Jack gunned the engine.

"It's mostly downhill from here, till you get to the A40," added Ianto.

"Good. Twenty minutes is too long."

Neither man spoke again until they arrived at [Bronllys Castle](http://www.castlewales.com/bronllys.html).

They found her on the first floor of the keep, collapsed in the window well, head laid on the window seat. It seemed as though she was looking wistfully towards the house below and the fields beyond, but as they rushed closer, Jack saw that her breathing was laboured and her eyes fixed and staring.

"Oh, no!" choked Ianto. He ran Tosh's scanner over the pale skin.

"Why did you leave us, like that?" crooned Jack, taking her weight and supporting her in his arms. "You know we'd have looked after you." He pressed a kiss between her eyes.

"This should help till we can get her back to the Hub. Hold out her arm," said Ianto, adjusting the dose in the syringe.

Jack arranged the shapely limb as best he could, steadying it as it flinched.

"She's so weak," murmured Ianto. "I don't think we should wait any longer, do you?"

"No," agreed Jack, arranging her limbs for easier carrying. "On three—"

With some difficulty, they made their way down the narrow stairs and past the man guarding the entrance.

"Thanks, Alun," said Jack. "We owe you one."

Alun turned slightly in his sleep, giving only a loud snore in response.

They were headed down the A479, back the way they'd come, thanks to the pile-up on the A470. Jack became aware of a rhythm in the back seat. Three short breaths building to one long one, exhaled on a cry. He glanced in the mirror and saw Ianto stroking the head cradled in his lap.

"It's all right, love," said Ianto. "Just hold on. We'll take care of you, you'll see."

Two miles down the road, the rhythm changed. Three short breaths followed now by two longer ones, noisy on intake and exhalation. Jack had heard something like this before, far too many times to count.

On the A40, Jack could barely hear the short breaths. Three noisy inhalations followed by a rattling exhale, and he looked in the mirror again.

"It's all right," Ianto whispered, tears falling onto unnaturally blue skin.

Jack didn't need to hear the words that Ianto pressed into the tense body with gentle, soothing hands: _Let go._

"I think she's gone," murmured Ianto, when Jack turned onto the detour.

Jack blinked hard to see the road.

"I'm so sorry."

"So'm I."

Jack drove until he came to a lay-by and then pulled over, turning off the engine. He got out of the SUV and opened the door behind him, reaching over Ianto to feel for a pulse, even though it was useless. "I didn't think you were that sick." He wiped his eyes, even though that, too, was useless. "I thought we'd have you for so much longer."

"She went there to die," said Ianto, quietly. "I knew something was wrong when she said goodbye last night." He stroked the shapely eyelids, as if trying to smooth them down over huge eyes.

Jack's breath caught. "What did she do?"

"She came up to me and leant against me, like she wanted a hug. Best I could get out of her before was sort of a shove."

Both men laughed, slightly, wiping at their eyes.

"She's going to get heavy," said Jack, at last. "Want to come up front?"

"Only if we can get something else to hold her head properly."

"I think I can arrange that." Jack pulled off his coat.

Ianto nodded and eased himself out of the back seat. Together, they folded and pushed until Jack's greatcoat provided the proper support. Their hands met accidentally as each ran his fingers over cooling skin, and they looked up, blinked and parted, each going to his own side of the front.

As Jack started up the car, he looked at his surroundings in earnest for the first time. It was beautiful, he thought, so bleak and stark—full of subtle, insistent life that he couldn't register on any level beyond the clinical. As he pulled away from the lay-by, he became aware that nothing really had any colour, anymore. Everything seemed dull. Distant. Grey.

Gray.

He stifled a shudder, and Gray. Again.

Death always did this to him, unless it was his own. As he drove down the detour he'd been forced to take, he wondered once more if he'd ever find any colour in his world again. It got harder to convince himself that he would with every death, and this one seemed especially hard, though he didn't know why.

When he'd become an officer—a real one, rather than a Torchwood plant—he'd cultivated the habit of naming all those whom he'd lost in the line of duty whenever someone died. If memory were the only immortality outside his own, he would give what he could. He named them, one after the other, in his mind, even the ones he hated, wondering if one day, he'd have so many names to remember that he'd take a millennium to recite them.

He was just reaching Algy—and the B4560—when he became aware that Ianto was staring at him. Then he realised that he'd been saying the names out loud. He looked at Ianto—who merely looked back at him and blinked—and resumed the list.

They were on the A468 when he reached Suzie. "Suzie Costello, Estelle Cole, Jasmine Pierce, Suzie Costello, John Ellis, Captain Jack Harkness, Beth Halloran, Tommy Brockless, Owen Harper, Gray, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato…." His voice was quavering and his vision blurring. "I don't even know her name!"

"I always called her Myfanwy, when nobody was looking," said Ianto, quietly.

Jack huffed a breath, unable to speak.

"And if you're going to remember the dead that way, might I suggest that you record it somewhere? Perhaps on a few different media, for posterity's sake? That way, you could just add names, as and when. Save you some time."

Jack was silent, throat and chest tight as he tried to concentrate on driving so as not to endanger.

"Unless that takes something away from it, of course," said Ianto, shifting.

"Myfanwy?" Jack asked, at last.

"She seemed to like it," said Ianto, with a small smile. "She always purred a bit when I called her that."

Jack thought he might be able to detect a bit of colour in his world, but for the black interior of the black SUV against the grey road in a grey Welsh rain on a now-grey day. He risked a look at Ianto to see pink skin and rose lips enticing him to taste when he couldn't.

He reached out to grasp Ianto's hand, warm and healthy and alive. He should say something, he thought, about Ianto's excellent idea for the names. He should say something about how smart he'd been to hire Ianto, and have Ianto remind him that he'd been stalked into it. He should say something about how important Ianto was to him, about … no, he shouldn't. It would hurt them both too much. He opened his mouth, and out tumbled, "Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato, Myfanwy."

**Author's Note:**

> We never actually hear the pterodactyl's (pteranodon's) name mentioned in the series, and this is a little nod to that factoid. :)
> 
> Bronllys Castle is currently viewable only from the outside, as it isn't safe to enter it. The Cadw site says that they're looking into ways of making it safe again for people to see it from the inside.
> 
> For the first time in forty years, it is possible to take the train from Cardiff to Ebbw Vale, which is just a couple of miles from Tredegar. Although I didn't write it into the story, I imagined Ianto doing just that, and being collected at the station by his sister. Unless, of course, he chose to walk. Just consider this note in the vein of the Captain's Blog on BBCA. ;)
> 
> This was written after my husband and I made a similar journey to the one depicted here. Our companion wasn't a pteranodon, nor did she sneak off somewhere to die, but she did suffer an unexpected medical event and she died in my arms on the way to the emergency vet hospital two hours away. Her name was Ruby.


End file.
